


theimprobableone

by corviine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Evelyn Trevor, John Watson's Blog, M/M, MI6!Victor, mentioned in passing for reasons, theimprobableone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:15:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corviine/pseuds/corviine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based around the headcanon that Victor Trevor is theimprobableone on John/Sherlock's blogs, and the recent updates there. Feat. Victor-having-lived-in-France, mentions of Victor's sister and the events of The Gloria Scott, Victor-working-for-MI6-in-some-shadowy-capacity and John and Victor being friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	theimprobableone

**Author's Note:**

> This [http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/23may] blog entry and the comments following is key to this fic, basically. Written on the premise that theimprobableone is Victor Trevor, even if that's probably not the case. Hush. I like my headcanon.
> 
> Written veeeery quickly so I hope it makes sense and I've remembered my facts right.

'Theimprobableone'.

Victor had gone by that psuedonym after discovering Sherlock's own website, and after that, John's. It had been easy to do, and it was a small contact with an old friend that had been an idle fancy at the beginning, little more.

And of course, there had been the offer of a place to stay that he never expected to be taken up-- and of course, it had not been. Still, it was there. And all too real, he supposed.  _Idle fancy_ didn't last long as a description.

Okay, so there had perhaps been a little jealousy of John that he could not shake. But that was just being human.

(But he did know Sherlock better than John could. He hoped.)

It had seemed appropriate, given Sherlock's general feeling on friends, and the assumptions of most that he had never really had a close relationship with anyone. He  _was_ improbable, by most people's standards, and it was just the smallest of clues.

 

***

He and Sherlock had met in university, under perhaps unfortunate circumstances, but Victor's persistence had paid off in some way.

Victor had moved there from France just a month before the start of term, and while his English was perfect (he was, after all, choosing to study the subject at that time, although it culminated in certain branching of interests, certain new skills and after that time when he and Sherlock had been there together, another degree) it was rather accented and all too obvious, when he considered it.

He had lived in an ancestral home from his mother's side from a young age, even after her death, and while the family home in Norfolk had been kept it had not been visited in all those years. When they moved back, his father and sister lived there, while he made his own arrangements.

The change had been welcome, more for his sister than himself. Evelyn had been suffering somewhat beforehand, and a little less after.

They had met, though, and become firm friends in a time shorter than either had expected.

Of course, Sherlock unconvering something that Victor was quite sure he never would have wanted to know and causing quite the change in the family served to effectively dissolve the ties between them.

He now considered it a shame.

 

***

Then had come the first contact after those old days, a consultation on a case, on Sherlock's own terms-- the case John chose to name Death by Twitter.. Sherlock went through John's blog and found someone he believed would know how to uncover a closed account and deleted emails, just on the basis of how they wrote their comments. A person Sherlock and John had known as theimprobableone.

He left it until rather a late point to inform Sherlock of their past association.

To put it more simply, he had waited until the moment he arrived at the door.

It was John who opened it, and Victor gave a bright smile at the sight of the man-- despite everything, he could not begrudge Sherlock such a good friend. His greeting was brief and simple, words still tinted with another language, and within minutes he was being lead up the stairs as John spoke to him about the case.

Sherlock, when he moved into the living room, was engrossed in his laptop, apparently inspecting the details of the case once again. Age dusted him, as Victor had expected, and the same had to be true for himself. That was an equal exchange between the two of them, and thus a little more acceptable. He did not look up immediately, which allowed Victor his few minutes of careful watching.

"Sherlock," he finally said, and Sherlock's gaze snapped up to meet his, and for a moment he appeared entirely derailed. (It had been a long time since Victor had seen that look on him, and he had rather wondered whether he was still capable of producing it.)

Victor smiled, and refrained from looking to John, who appeared quite out of the loop.

Sherlock composed himself quickly, as always, and closed his laptop with a quiet  _snick_  as he stood. "Victor Trevor. Who ever would have thought it?" There was a dry cautiousness to his tone, perhaps, but it was gone in half moment.

"I would have thought you would have had the best chance of working it out."

There was a roll of his eyes from Sherlock, and his guard was back up. "The lack of grammar threw me off."

He grinned. "Perhaps that was part of the point."

"This isn't the time for idle discussions of facts that are irrelevant to the current issue."

Within half an hour everything Ceylan thought she'd deleted about herself was in Sherlock's inbox.

Victor discovered everything about her.

 

***

To Sherlock's apparent surprise, Victor managed to become rather closer friends with John than expected, their shared concern for Sherlock's well-being serving as a common point to base it around, just at first.

To Sherlock's mild surprise, Victor did not disappear straight after the case. There were constraints on timing and such due to the nature of his work-- it was rather similar to the task he had been called to aid Sherlock with, but rather more secretive --but he made the effort to be around more, keep the contact with Sherlock, and slowly rebuild what had been lost after years.

It was odd, yes. But there were people whom one was going on the same path to, paralell, and however long they might have spent apart, it was easy to slide back into an old staus quo on arrival. However many times they might part, they would be able to step back into an old pattern as if nothing had changed between them-- or so Victor presumed, at this point. They never truly diverged; their paths just curved away for a while.

The conversation about the events leaning to their parting never happened, and neither of them seemed to make an effort to cause it to come to the forefront. Some things were better buried.

And in that manner, the severed attachment Victor had had to the man reformed.

The last time Victor had seen Sherlock was a week before his Fall, and immediately prior to the start of an assignment that left Victor too busy and exhausted to do much but sleep between times.

They had been smoking on the roof terrace of Victor's small but functional flat, and Victor had slung a blanket around their shoulders to keep the both of them a little warmer.

"You know," Victor had said mildly, tapping the ash from his cigarette onto the floor, only to have it whisked away by the wind. "It was one of the proudest days of my life."

Sherlock shot him a look askance. "From what I've gathered, you do that kind of thing all the time. Why should it have been any different?"

"Oh, well..." A smile tugged at the corners of Victor's mouth, and he nudged the man lightly in the side. "It was you." Sherlock just scoffed, and elbowed him a little harder.

"Saccharine and awful."

"Don't know why you keep me around."

Sherlock almost smiled, taking another long drag on his cigarette. "You lend me things when John isn't around."

Victor chuckled. "Ah, of course. I do like to be valued."

He leant over and pressed a kiss to Sherlock's lips, chaste and fleeting, before he stood up and held out a hand to Sherlock. A chill was settling in the air more bitingly, and he fully intended on avoiding hypothermia. "That too."

 

***

Seven days and fifteen hours passed before Victor finally recieved the message that his-- no, they never had settled on a word--that Sherlock was dead. That Sherlock was gone and never had been  _everything_ that Victor had believed him to be.

He had seen it, and that was what made it so terrifying. He had seen Sherlock change himself for a case, had seen him act and  _be_ someone else, his heart and words and expression changing to be his disguise. There was no way he could have been a fake. There was no way that all of it coul dhave been lies, except-- 

Except he found himself unable to be sure about it.

There were a few comments left on John's blog when he was feeling less than optimistic, and was more than a little intoxicated, which he didn't delete.

Paths even as close as theirs had been could not survive death.

 

***

He found doubt creeping in more and more around the edges these days, and hated himself for it. He hated the idea that he might doubt someone that had meant such a great deal, might not believe  _who he was_ and what he was and all that he did.

It was hard.

Some days, he found himself believing in Sherlock entirely, and on others he was sure that it was all a lie. He continued his association with John, as much as could be allowed, as much as he could stand, and there were reassurances from him as to the relity of their friend.

_You need to know it was real. What you did. Sherlock. He was real. What you believed in. It was real._

Yes, he did need to know, but he could not. Not entirely.

It was hard and he had things that he needed to do; he could not afford to simply fall apart because of one bad day. He had to continue, and do his job, and he everything Sherlock had believed him to be even if it was no longer true vice versa.

Another message recieved from a certain E Thomson-- wasn't that John's therapist? --went ignored, although not at all deliberately.

 

***

Two days passed from his last comment to discovery by John.

He had, admittedly, returned home after thirty-six hours, more than a little worse for wear, cracked ribs, two broken fingers and stitches being the worst of them.

It was his own fault, he supposed. All his thoughts of Sherlock and whether or not he had been as he had always imagined had served to make him distracted, and careless. His actions had been discovered that time and his location had not been secure enough, which lead all too quickly to discovery and an admittedly inexpert administration of pain. (That didn't mean it was any more pleasant afterwards, all the same.)

There had been a part of him that was willing to take risks, that would sacrifice his safety to increase the effectiveness of his work-- and that part had only become louder after Sherlock's death. That, perhaps, had something to do with it. 

He had spent a half day in hospital after his employers had caught up with him, irritated at himself and at Sherlock _the dead bastard_  and at every part of it.

 _Sentiment_ , he was sure Sherlock would have pointed out. Sentiment had made him make mistakes.

When he opened the door to John, he sighed just faintly but stepped aside. "I'm fine," he said quickly, even though John was a doctor and would surely realise that his injuries had been sustained in an attack.  _I am not at liberty to talk about it_ might have been a better phrase, but far too revealing.

"Bloody hell, mate," John muttered as he stepped inside. 

There was a long pause then. Conversations had swayed this way before when conversation had swayed towards Victor's job, and there had been a quick change in topic. Victor could not talk about it, and would not talk about it. They had established that long enough ago.

And so, John didn't ask, and Victor was incredibly grateful for that. He didn't want to have to deflect questions or make up lies just at the moment. "You've still got both hands, you could have at least replied to me."

Victor huffed out a low laugh that made him wince and lean against the wall for a long moment, before moving gingerly back towards his living room. "Been a bit busy, you know."

"Looks like you've been doing something stupid, actually." 

Victor grimaced. He had been thinking about Sherlock, and yes, it had been stupid.

"You know me. Sherlock gave me a taste for the dangerous-- sorry, sorry, interesting. He would say interesting." He didn't look at John as he said it; didn't want to see that flicker in his expression that would give too much away.

"You know--" John started, and it was a little stilted. Of course, he knew why. It was the only subject they discussed that ever quite caused this reaction. "It isn't a lie. He wasn't. You knew him for the longest of anyone, probably, and-- you have to know that he was real."

"Do you want tea?" Victor asked, still turned away. 

"Victor." John frowned at him where he stood; this was important. Even if these injuries had had nothing to do with the messages, it was important. It had to be said, from time to time, lest anyone forget.

"I know," Victor said quietly, and shot a look over in John's direction, a smile that held not a trace of true happiness twisting at his lips.

"You should sit down," John said instead, after a moment of watching. "And have a drink, I reckon. You've gone and done your ribs, haven't you?"

"I should accuse you of fussing."

"Just making sure you're looked after too."

Oh, and wasn't that just it. He had tried, in those months after Sherlock's death, to be a support to John, as much as he was able and as much as John would allow him to be. It was an automatic thing, and had been ever since his sister. His tendency to take care of others before himself could become alarming, if he didn't pay enough attention to keeping it in check.

But--

_He's being looked after._


End file.
